Archive for the Travel Category
Monte Carlo Methods in Stockholm 2026
Posted in Statistics, Travel, University life with tags KTH, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Markov chain Monte Carlo, MCMC, Monte Carlo Statistical Methods, Stockholm, Sweden, Swedish e-Science Research Centre, theoretical foundations, workshop on September 29, 2026 by xi'an
Tidy up, Claude!
Posted in Linux, Mountains, pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags AI, Anthropic, BibTeX, Claude, CV, Fuji-Subaru Line 5th Station, github, Happo Lake, infinity pool, jatp, LaTeX, Nagano, pond, publications, Ubuntu 24.04, vita, webpage, Xi'an's Og on September 27, 2026 by xi'an
Nothing out of the ordinary there, but after years of procrastination at failing to update my publication webpage, following a wreckage by the default web composer on Ubuntu (and yours truly obviously!), I took advantage of the extra energy gained by my altitude night at the 5th station to ask Claude to update this page, with it replying it preferred to start from scratch (and from my LaTeX vita files). The only drawback is that many of the links introduced in the earlier version were not retrieved by the AI, despite my repeated request. On the plus side, trawling for missing entries and unpublished arXiv oldies but goldies, as well as adding mountain pictures (from the ‘Og!) proved much easier than the manual-by-keyboard approach. And I got an extra bonus in updating my LaTeX publication file and by creating the corresponding bibTeX file, all now available on my github page.
kaiseki feast [飯鉢 称名寺店]
Posted in pictures, Travel, University life with tags abalone, Akaike Memorial Lecture, awards, bottarga, Hiroki Akaike, Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan, Japanese cuisine, Japanese Society of Statistics, kaiseki, miso, National Federation of Statistical Associations, restaurant, Shōmyōji Temple, University of Tokyo, yellowfin tuna, Yokohama, Yokohama City University on September 25, 2026 by xi'anFollowing my Akaike Memorial Lecture, I was treated to a very traditional kaiseki dinner near Shōmyōji Temple in Kanazawa, Yokohama. The place felt as if there was only room for a single party and the taxi was uncertain he could drive all the way there as the street was getting narrower and narrower!
The dinner consisted of nine dishes, most of which I had not tasted before. Including the one below with abalone and the Japanese equivalent of bottarga. Fabulous experience!
prequential posteriors in the Japanese Journal of Statistics and Data Science
Posted in Books, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags Akaike Lecture, data assimilation, deep generative forecasting models, defense, generalised Bayesian inference, generative models, intractable likelihood, Japan, Japanese Federation of Statistical Science Associations, Japanese Journal of Statistics and Data Science, Monte Carlo methods, prequential loss, prequential priors, publication, sequential Monte Carlo, special issue, viva on September 22, 2026 by xi'an
The paper Prequential posteriors Shreya Roy wrote as part of her PhD thesis at Warwick U, under the supervision of Rito Dutta, Richard Everitt and myself, got published on-line after earlier acceptance by the Japanese Journal of Statistics and Data Science, an official journal of the Japanese Federation of Statistical Science Associations. Coïncidental but unrelated to my Akaike Memorial Lecture prize. The paper will be part of a special issue on Recent Advances in Dynamical Monte Carlo Methods. Congrats to Shreya, soon to defend her viva in Warwick!
X Fall²⁶ World Tour
Posted in Running, Statistics, Travel with tags Air France, Akaike Lecture, Argentan, Argentan half-marathon, August, battery, Bayesian Adversarial Privacy, bullet climb, Durham, EMS 2026, England, Flexibus, Fuji-san, Fuji-Subaru Line 5th Station, Haneda, Italy, Japan, Lugano, Marseille, Milano Linate, Milano Malpensa, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Norman, Normandy, North, Northumbria, RER B, rhubarb, RSS 2013, SNCF, soba noodles, Switzerland, TGV, Tokyo, vacations, Yokohama, Yoshida trail on September 21, 2026 by xi'anAs you may have noticed from previous entries, over the past three weeks I have been almost constantly travelling, with various but mostly large amounts of luck in my travels.
Starting with a Paris-Marseille round trip for our daughter birthday, where both trains ran on time with operational WiFi and Air conditioning (and the inevitable noisy junior passengers commuting back from their vacations).
Followed a few hours later by a Paris-Lugano round trip where again the stars aligned since the flight to Milano Malpensa was on time and landed 20mn before the only direct (flexi)bus to Lugano departed. Again in time. On the way back I had to leave right after my talk (apologies!) but got a direct (if slow) train to Milano and hopped the push via Montenapoleone (!) between two Milano metro lines to reach Milano Linate with one hour to go. On time again.
One day at home to sort various pump issues (from fixing all car injectors to replacing a drainage pump that failed to stop a massive rainstorm from entering our basement, to a flat bike tyre returning from PariSanté Campus) and then a quick weekend drive to Argentan, Normandy, for which the car managed and the traffic was surprisingly smooth for the last weekend of the national August vacation break), and where I enjoyed a long run in the woody hills, one month or so prior to the Argentan half-marathon, 30 years from my first participation. Enough time back home to cook a fresh, Norman, rhubarb preserve and off to to Durham, Northumbria, by another smooth, on-time, flight, with the small hitch of the RER B—just back from being closed for an entire month—unexpectedly finishing one station too early (and a particularly noisy family returning from one amusement park). And the same on the return, via Newcastle with a glimpse from the train of the Tyne and its iconic bridge. Reminding me of my visit there for the RSS meeting in 2013, travelling with Jim Hobert.
One more day at home and at work (teaching my first Monte Carlo class of the semester) and I was back in Charles de Gaulle airport for the flight to Tokyo Haneda. With enough time to have a second breakfast in the lounge and leave my phone on my seat!, fortunately recovered a few frantic minutes later. The flight took one hour less than expected, thanks to favourable winds, with the hitches of having no AC power plug available on the plane and no Wifi on either phone or laptop, a nuisance on a 12h day flight with a talk to polish. Going through customs at Haneda was even smoother than “usual” and I only took one wrong train on my way to Yokohama. (Which happened again the next days until I decided to stick Google map schedules, which are highly accurate and constantly updated). The only hitch of the trip was the attempt at bullet summiting Fuji-san, unsurprisingly as with most of my bullet attempts!, because the weather conditions were horrendous to the point of wardens turning people off at the entry of the Yoshida path and also to the point of inducing landslides on the unique route conducting to the 5th station. I thus got stuck there with 1600 people for a few hours until the route was reopened and the shuttle restarted, obviously with some further delays in entering the (third) bus, with more confusion and jostling than usual in Japan (but also with a large proportion of foreign hikers!). Taxis were not responding either and before the news came of the reopening I was getting worried about missing my flight! While the return saw no seamless connections and no express trains, leading to a total trip time close to 5 hours, incl. a cold soba stop at a station, I still managed to reach my Haneda hotel at check-in time and to have an intense training session on their treadmill to make up for the missing 15km and 1400⁺ climb. (Rescheduling my direct bus ticket on-line proved impossible from my phone without a local help as automated translation does not work with images.) The flight back to Paris went very smoothly by the Eastern route over the pole, with AC power (making my external battery delivered by amazon.jp fortunately superfluous since it is prohibited to use on AF flights) and Wifi running. Making my working on the paper associated with the Akaike lecture way more efficient.
